Tag Archives: book

The Unwilling Warlord

By Lawrence Watt-Evans

Back when eBooks first started coming out (after Project Gutenburg, but before the Sony Reader devices, I think – the early noughties perhaps?), fictionwise made quite a stir by publishing out of print works from lesser known or genre authors, and a lot of short stories (way before the Kindle shorts), at very decent prices. I went through buying works by W.T. Quick, Walter Jon Williams and Lawrence Watt Evans, for about £3 each (less with bulk buy and subscription discounts, if I recall). I even put a web page together about what devices I used and what tools (this was long before Calibre came along and made eBook conversion easy (reminds me, must donate).

I bought all the Lawrence Watt Evans books they had, but didn’t get round to reading any of them. My recent rediscovery of one of his books in the loft though, reminded me, and I’ve been working my way through them since.

I think I avoided this one originally because I didn’t fancy the premise, but it took a turn I hadn’t thought of, and got me interested in the whole Esthar world again. It turn out I’m reading them slightly out of sequence, so I get tantalising hints of back story from other characters.

I’m going to read through the others I have and then buy the rest (via fictionwise if I can buy them without DRM, via Kindle if not..

Data Analysis with Open Source Tools

By Philip K. Jannert

Alas, my maths just isn’t up to this. I’m horrified at how much my calculus and algebra have declined, and they weren’t exactly my strongest suite to begin with.

I have the eBook thanks to an OReilly deal, and the Library at work bought a copy for me that I can go back to if I need to, so I plan to pick up a few of his suggested remedial reading books on Calculus and see if I can get back up to speed. In the meantime, I’ll release the dead tree version back to the Library to let them lend it to people who can make better use of it!

Kid vs Squid

By Greg Van Eekout

I bought this after being directed to his site from the Podcastle Story ‘The Osteomancer’s son’, which was wonderfully dark and creepy.

This is a YA book (more Y and A, I think – like the 1st Harry Potter), about a boy who stays with his uncle during the summer and finds that the local carnies are in fact a witch cursed people nicknamed flotsam, and he ends up fighting assorted sea creatures under the witches control, aided by a princess of flotsam, and a girl out of ‘Harriet the spy’ (in a good way).

Its a quick easy read, and very enjoyable – I’ll look for more of his work when he brings his Osteomancer series out.